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Call for Submissions for
Volume 37 (2025) – Special Issue:
Blackness, Race, and Racism in Nineteenth-Century Studies

Wendy Castenell and A. Maggie Hazard, co-editors
wcastenell@wlu.edu; ahazar1@saic.edu

This special issue will explore how Blackness was constructed and problematized by a hegemonic global structure across national boundaries during the long nineteenth century. The issue will pay particular attention to emerging concepts of Black identities during this period. Critically, majority narratives have driven these constructions, propagating mediated histories that subjugate Black people, yet the full impact of these narratives has not been thoroughly explored and needs additional interrogation. Essays might consider topics related to images, texts, other forms of media, or more. Possible topics could include expressions of Black autonomy in white supremacist cultures; colonialism / decolonization; trauma studies; slavery / emancipation; Black soldiers; Black artists / photographers / writers; the development and expression of stereotypes; the practice of lynching; transatlantic migration and the Black diaspora; and other relevant subjects.

Please submit manuscripts for scholarly essays of 8,000-12,000 words, pedagogical essays of 2,000-4,000 words, or book or exhibition reviews of 600-1000 words following NCS submission guidelines to both guest editors Wendy Castenell and A. Maggie Hazard at wcastenell@wlu.edu and ahazar1@saic.edu. Additionally, we welcome suggestions of books for reviews relevant to the theme of this special issue. Please send your suggestions to the editors. Early expressions of interest and proposals of topics are also welcome. The initial deadline for submission of full manuscripts is August 15, 2024, but earlier submissions are encouraged.

Forthcoming Volume: Volume 36 (2024)

Colleen Tripp, “Orientalism and Spectacle Ethnography in Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance” 

Tiffany Johnson Bidler, “Thomas Eakins’s Portrait of Professor Benjamin Howard Rand and the Scientific Performance on Color, Light, and Vision in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia” 

Sean Donaghue-Johnston, “Dangerous Dens of Amusement: Penny Gaffs and the Moral Education of the London Street-folk” 

Carol Harrison, “Biography, Women’s Friendship, and Anglo-Catholicism: Lady Georgiana Fullerton and Her Circle” 

Ellen Rees, “Ibsen’s Happy Endings, Or the Vaudeville Origins of Modern Drama”

Current Volume: Volume 35 (2023)

Sarah Lund, “Fossils: Lithography’s Porous Time and Eugène Delacroix’s Faust Marginalia”

Srimayee Basu McCall, “Flaming Madras handkerchiefs and calico blazing with crimson and scarlet flowers”: Antebellum World Systems in Hannah Crafts’s The Bondwoman’s Narrative

Shelly Jarenski, “Playing Dead: Eadweard Muybrige’s Residential Photo Albums and Spiritualist Aesthetics”

Laura White, “Evolutionary Science, Empire, and Disenchantment in May Kendall’s That Very Mab (1885)”

Helena Chen, “Interpreting the Egyptian Code in Nineteenth-Century China: Pan Zuyin and His Circle of Antiquarians”

William Gibbons, “Helen and Paris: Classicism and Frenchness in Saint-Saëns’s Hélène“